The present paper analyses how resource rents may affect political outcomes in a polarized society, where groups hold conflicting views on economic policy. A politically dominant group decides whether or not to include the opposition in the national political process. The weaker group chooses...

The economics literature on mercantilism tends to emphasize gold hoarding and external barriers to trade as defining characteristics. However, medieval institutions included a host of internal barriers to trade as well as external ones. High offices were often for sale as were monopoly...

What determines the structure of labour market institutions? I argue that common explanations based on rent seeking are incomplete. Unions, job protection and egalitarian pay structures may have as much to do with social insurance of otherwise uninsurable risks as with rent seeking. In support...

A major contribution of the public-choice school is the recognition by Gordon Tullock that contestable rents give rise to social losses because of unproductive resource use. Contestable rents usually are politically assigned privileges. Contestable rents can also be found outside of government...

Equal treatment rules ("ETR") serve as low-cost-enforcement-mechanisms to curb wasteful rent-seeking contests between individuals or groups. This is accomplished by vesting individual Intervention Rights (such as the right to participate in the rents granted to others ("Sharing Right") or the...

The branch of economics known as “public choice” uses the tools of economics to analyze political behavior. Rejecting idealized versions of government intervention, it assumes that individuals participating in the political system are rational self-interest maximizers (homo economicus). A...

Blockchains and applications built on blockchains are decentralised ecosystems that are nonetheless built by centralised firms. The typical launch and maturity of a blockchain ecosystem involves the transition from an entrepreneurial institutional arrangement characterised by market...

I Why Is the Rent-Seeking Industry So Small? -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Rents, Ignorance, and Ideology -- 3 The Cost of Rent Seeking: A Metaphysical Problem -- 4 Efficient Rent Seeking, Diseconomies of Scale, Public Goods, and Morality -- II Random Thoughts on Rent Seeking -- 5 Rent Seeking: The...